First Providence College GATA grad plans career in social work

Aug. 21, 2018

Victoria Dubois is the first to graduate from the Guaranteed Admission and Tuition
Agreement program, also known as GATA, with Providence College's School of Continuing
Education. The program allowed her to earn her bachelor's degree with a 33 percent
tuition discount following her graduation from CCRI.

Warwick native Victoria DuBois vividly remembers the anxiety of transitioning from
private to public school as a teenager.

She remembers eating lunch by herself in the cafeteria, drifting aimlessly through
the school day with no friends to talk to and no one to lean on until she ultimately
stopped going to class.

As she begins her next chapter in life this fall at Rhode Island College studying
for her master’s degree in social work, the 21-year-old Community College of Rhode
Island and Providence College graduate is focused on providing hope and encouragement
for teenagers dealing with similar issues.

The first-ever graduate of both CCRI and PC’s Guaranteed Admission and Tuition Agreement
(GATA) program, DuBois is pursuing a career as a high school or college social worker
and hopes to eventually open her own practice.

She has transitioned from a shy, disoriented teenager stuck in truancy court to a
hard-working, selfless champion for the tens of thousands of adolescents who simply
need someone to talk to.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in liberal studies at PC in May, she will attend
RIC on a part-time basis while continuing her work on the relief staff at the Sojourner
House, a shelter for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

The GATA program, a partnership the colleges entered during DuBois’ sophomore year,
gave her a direct path to PC’s School of Continuing Education after completing her
associate degree. GATA provides accepted students with a 33 percent tuition discount,
which allowed her to earn a bachelor’s degree at nearly a fraction of the cost of
attending a four-year university.

Without GATA, DuBois would’ve either racked up thousands of dollars in student debt,
or perhaps not earned her bachelor’s degree at all because of the rising costs of
tuition. Now she’s on the fast track to helping those struggling with the difficulties
of adolescence the same way she did as a teenager.

“Growing up in the time I have, it’s been the time of school shootings and increased
teen suicides. Our teenagers now are having a really tough time,” DuBois said. “I’ve
known a number of kids that I went to high school with that if someone just sat them
down and talked to them on a person-to-person level and just treated them like they
want to be treated, they would’ve ended up in a different spot.”

DuBois was fortunate enough to have that outlet, but not without a few bumps in the
road. During her first two years at Pilgrim High School, she struggled with severe
anxiety as a result of obsessive-compulsive disorder. With no one to confide in, she
began skipping class to avoid triggering her symptoms and inevitably wound up in truancy
court.

“It was a big wake-up call to me,” she said. “I wasn’t going to achieve the things
I wanted to achieve if I was doing what I was doing.”

At the direction of school administration, she began seeing Diane Ferrara, a clinical
social worker in Warwick and adviser at Pilgrim.

“After those first few sessions, it really wasn’t forced. I just liked going there,”
DuBois said. “Eventually, I would go there and eat lunch with her and talk. If she
wasn’t there, I would’ve just continued to not go to school and continued to do what
I was doing and not cared.”

Ferrara helped DuBois cope with her anxiety and eventually persuaded her to begin
seeing a therapist and psychiatrist for additional support. Once she understood the
benefits of having someone to talk to, DuBois began to think about ways she, too,
could help others. Even her psychiatrist recommended she pursue a career in social
work.

She knew she had an instinctive compassion and willingness to listen to others – it
ran in her family. Her grandmother worked as a chef at the former Nickerson Community
Center in the Olneyville section of Providence, where she helped teach proper eating
habits to the children at the day care, many of whom didn’t have enough to eat at
home. Her grandfather is a Catholic deacon and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor who hosted
NA meetings in the basement of his church.

DuBois began laying the foundation for her own career while working as a page at the
Warwick Public Library, where she “got a taste for dealing with the public.”

“We’d get a lot of group homes that would come in and I just started making friends
with the people and learning their stories,” she said. “I realized at some point that
I really just wanted to do that instead of putting the books away.”

DuBois turned the corner as a junior and senior at Pilgrim, scoring perfect attendance
over her final two years while taking advanced placement courses. She enrolled at
CCRI after graduation and said the experience changed her life.

“I’m really glad I came to CCRI,” she said. “If you come here for two years you can
at least explore a bunch of options you weren’t able to explore in high school. You
have more control over what you take. You’re given this independence to say, ‘What
do you want to learn?’ You get to decide for yourself. It’s pretty awesome. It’s a
place where you can really figure yourself out and figure out what’s best for you.”

She first considered a career as an English teacher or a journalist, but ultimately
navigated toward social work while taking a course in political ideology with late
CCRI Professor James Minuto. She finally zeroed in on social work during the stretch
run at PC.

“I got closer to graduating PC and I was like, ‘What am I going to do? Am I going
to go to grad school? Am I just going to get a job and work full time?’” she said.
“That’s when I really started considering it and thinking about all of the influences
I had been pushing around in my head. I just felt like I needed to do something that
was going to help on a larger scale because I have some pretty big ideas and I really
felt like I wanted to do something with them.”

Sharing stories and ideas with students from all walks of life – some with a clear
path and others who were uncertain– helped DuBois narrow her focus and find her true
calling. She also preferred the one-on-one interactions with her clients at the Sojourner
House, which allowed her to make a greater impact on each individual. Working with
adolescents is a natural fit.

“My high school experience has played a huge role in my whole life course and I think
a lot of high school kids are placed in really tough positions sometimes as far as
figuring all of these things out,” she said. “Their hormones are raging, everything
is terrible, teachers and administration are concerned about their grades and coaches
are concerned about athletic performance and parents are concerned about how they’re
acting at home, but no one is ever asking them, ‘Hey, how are you doing? What are
you feeling right now?’ If I can do that for one kid, I would be happy.”